The Three Sliders
As you get further into this course, you’ll notice characters are described more and more like a “list of properties”. Of course, you can’t reduce humans to just a few sliders or numbers, but it is a great starting point. Especially when it comes to characters arcs: changing a character defined by sliders just means moving one of the sliders over the course of the story.
From those ideas, I liked the “three sliders” from author Brandon Sanderson the best. They are:
- Likeability: how many positive or redeeming traits do they have?
- Proactivity: how active are they? (Wanting things, making decisions, taking action.)
- Competence: how capable are they? (Their level for a certain skill or how often they succeed.)
Imagine these are sliders that run from 0% to 100%. For example, 0% proactivity means the character is absolutely static and never takes any action whatsoever. Or, 100% competence means they’re literally the best in the world at something.
The idea is to
- Decide the value of these sliders for each of your characters!
- And move one value over time, to give a continuous sense of progress (or “motion”), and create a character arc.
In general, main characters are highly proactive. That’s why they are the main character! Because they do make the story happen. They do the most important stuff and are present at the most important scenes.
It’s also recommended to balance these sliders (for most characters). You don’t want somebody near 0% on all sliders. That would mean they are unlikable, do nothing, and are incapable of doing anything. Why would that be a character audiences want to see?
Instead, you might put two sliders at a low value, but the third one really (really) high. You can almost see it like distributing points: you have about 150% total to give away, how do you distribute it across the sliders?
Say we have a character with 80% likeability, 50% proactivity, and 10% competence. What would they look like?
They might be a really sweet girl, kind and helpful. Her proactivity comes from that helpfulness: she’s always ready to take action and help out others. But … she’s pretty terrible at actually helping :p Her competence is low, which means she hinders people more than she helps, even with the best intentions.
See what I mean? Just by putting a value to these three properties, I immediately generated a character worth exploring.
And now for the final trick: to give her an arc, we MOVE the sliders! You might choose to make her less likeable over time, because everybody refuses her help or treats her badly. Or, conversely, you might choose to send her on an adventure that raises her competence.
We have a character with 20% likeability, 20% proactivity, and 100% competence. What would they look like?
They’re probably an expert in their field, very focused on training and self-improvement. They’re probably some grumpy older person who treats everybody else as “not worth his time” and leaves the dirty work to “others less skilled than he”.
To give them an arc, we move the sliders. We might make it a more tragic tale and reduce competence (perhaps because they’re growing old, perhaps because they refuse to be proactive). Or we might make it an uplifting one, by improving the likeability, making the expert teach some young student that shows him to enjoy life more.
Now write!
Create characters using this technique! Give them a value for each slider (making sure to not make characters too overpowered or underpowered, unless you can make it work), then move the values to get an arc.
Write a story that way!
Want to support me?
Buy one of my projects. You get something nice, I get something nice.
Donate through a popular platform using the link below.
Simply giving feedback or spreading the word is also worth a lot.